How to optimise your content for search

Use popular keywords to make the most of search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engines are where most users start their search for information. If they can’t find your page, they won’t get to your content.

If you use their vocabulary, starting with your page title, summary and first paragraph, users will be more likely to find it.

Find popular keywords with search tools

Use search tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner to find the keywords that people are searching for in Google. The words you use to describe your content may not be the words your users use to try and find it.

To use Keyword Planner:

register with Google AdWords Keyword Planner (select ‘I’m an experienced AdWords user’ when this button comes up to avoid having to pay for ad campaigns)

enter your keyword in the search field

make sure that results are filtered to UK

Example

We have a guide on GOV.UK that covers a benefit people can get if their partner dies, called ‘Bereavement Allowance’. At first we gave this guide the name of the benefit, but a colleague in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) told us that ‘widow’s pension’ was a much more popular term. A Keyword Planner report confirms this.

The term ‘bereavement allowance’ gets 450 searches per month, while the term ‘widow’s pension’ gets over 6,000.

Double-check with Google Trends

The volume figures in search tools aren’t exact, so focus on trends and relative popularity rather than the numbers. Use multiple tools if you’re going to make a big content decision like changing a title.

Example

Optimise content for search

Once you know the most popular keywords you can prioritise them in the:

title

introductory sentence/summary

headings

chapter/part titles

metadata descriptions (only for ‘mainstream’ content)

Example

It’s best to start with the least disruptive content change, so in the Bereavement Allowance example we initially added the term ‘widow’s pension’ in the first sentence.
Bereavement Allowance GOV.UK page

At the time of writing GOV.UK is now getting the most traffic from Google for this term, having surpassed HMRC which was previously first in results.

Get a more detailed understanding of your users

As well as the keywords that people are using in search, you can also uncover the specific questions that people have about government services with the search tools above.

Example

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner report also shows terms related to ‘widow’s pension’. This report groups the long list of keywords into themes, and you can click on each theme heading to get the keyword variations. This allows you to understand what questions users want answered in our content.

For example, people search for ‘rates’ in relation to ‘widow’s pension’.

Searches on GOV.UK

We also look at what people are searching for on GOV.UK with the Google Analytics Search Terms report. This is helpful to understand what people want specifically from government, not the whole internet.

You’ll need a GOV.UK Google Analytics account to access this link. If you don’t have an account, you can request a report from your departmental single point of contact (SPOC).

Specify the term you want data on; for example to confirm demand for ‘widow’s pension’ you can ask to see how many people searched for this within a certain time period.

Meta descriptions

We don’t currently make our meta descriptions available for Google to use in search results, but they’re used on browse pages and in internal search results. Meta descriptions help clarify the purpose of the page and focus on the user need.

Trending searches on GOV.UK

Knowing which search terms are ‘trending’ on GOV.UK (being searched for more than usual) can help you to spot user needs that are new or growing in popularity.

GOV.UK trending searches dashboard

The GOV.UK trending searches dashboard pulls in data from Google Analytics into Google Sheets. Then it filters the data to show only what’s being searched for more than usual (compared to yesterday, last week or last month).

Customise the GOV.UK trending searches dashboard

The GOV.UK trending searches dashboard shows search patterns across the whole of GOV.UK.

But if you have a GOV.UK Google Analytics account, you can customise the dashboard so it’s more relevant to your organisation. It works by setting up a ‘segment’, so that the dashboard only shows data about a visit if that visit includes a page published by your organisation.

Bear in mind that segmented data from Google Analytics is sampled to speed up processing.

If you don’t have a GOV.UK Google Analytics account, you’ll need to ask your department or agency’s GOV.UK analytics lead to customise the dashboard for you.

Step 1: make a copy of the dashboard

Make a copy of the GOV.UK trending searches dashboard. To do this, go to File > Make a copy, then save a new version.

Step 2: set up a segment so the data is more relevant to your organisation

Go to the Report Configuration tab in your copy of the dashboard. Paste this code into cell B12:

sessions::condition::ga:customVarValue9=~^<D10>

D10 is the organisation ID for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Change the letter and number to match your own organisation ID.

To find your organisation ID, open up a new browser window and go to your organisation home page on GOV.UK. Then right click and select ‘View source’. Find the ‘govuk:analytics:organisations’ line and copy the ID. For example, on the DWP organisation home page it looks like this:

<meta name="govuk:analytics:organisations" content="&lt;D10&gt;">

Step 3 (optional): add searches associated with mainstream content

GOV.UK mainstream content doesn’t currently have organisation IDs for analytics. But you can segment content by the top-level browse section that it belongs to.

To combine more than one segment, use a comma (with no spaces). If there’s a comma in the name of the browse section, you’ll need to put a backslash in front of it.

So, for data about users who viewed any content tagged with the DWP organisation <D10> or any content in the mainstream ‘Benefits’ or ‘Working, jobs and pensions’ sections, you would paste this code into cell B12:

Unique Pageviews

This represents the number of visits in which that page was viewed. So, if a user visits a page 5 times during their browsing session, it will show up as one unique pageview in Google Analytics.

Pageviews

This is a count of every time that page was viewed.

For example, if someone visits page X, then goes to page Y and then page X again, then page X will be shown having 2 pageviews (and one unique pageview).

Entrances

This is the number of times that page was the first page on the site viewed by users.

Entrances/Pageviews

A simple calculation showing entrances to the page as a percentage of the pageviews.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of ‘single-page sessions’ – that is, users who viewed only this page and then left GOV.UK.

Average Time on Page

How long users view the page for on average.

In the web version of Google Analytics, it’s given in hours, minutes and seconds - hh:mm:ss. In exported spreadsheets, it’s just in seconds.

Treat this metric with caution – see below.

% Exit

The percentage of exits that were made from the page (calculated as number of exits/number of pageviews).

How to use the data:

Find out what is the most (and least) popular content

By default, Google Analytics will order reports by the first metrics column. In the above report the Service Manual homepage was the highest visited page followed by the Digital by Default page.

The Unique Pageviews column will show you your most visited pages. Clicking on the down arrow at the top of the column will show the reverse order, ie the least visited pages.

Note that Google Analytics will only show URLs that were visited in the time period (ie, it won’t show up pages which weren’t visited at all). All iterations of URLs will appear as well.

Find potential navigation issues

Dividing the Pageviews metric by Unique Pageviews will show on average how many times a page was viewed during users’ sessions.

A high ratio (above 1.4) indicates that users have to come back to that page within their session. This should be a primer for you to investigate the navigation from that page further to identify any issues.

You’ll need to work this out yourself by exporting the data to a spreadsheet. Unfortunately Google doesn’t do this for you.

Identify pages that need to be better optimised

If the Entrances/Pageviews percentage metric is low on pages getting a reasonable amount of traffic, then it suggests that users have a need for the page. However, most are having to navigate their way to get to it so better optimisation for search may be needed.

What high bounce rates suggest

Bounce rates should only be viewed against the Entrances metric and not with Pageviews.

A high bounce rate on navigation pages reveals a problem, as it indicates users are not engaging with the page. Changes should be made and the page measured again.

However, a high bounce rate on content pages is not necessarily a bad thing as users could have found the information they came for and didn’t need to go any further.

Length of time spent on a page

The Average Time on Page metric provides a guide to how engaged users are with your page.

However, treat with caution. This is because it excludes data from sessions in which the page was the last one visited on GOV.UK (eg, it doesn’t include single page sessions).

So for pages with high bounce rates (such as news pages), the dwell time displayed by Google may be very wide of the mark. As a general rule, the lower the % Exits rate, the more representative the average time on the page will be.

How to build reports for your own content

If there are sets of pages you frequently measure, you can save time by building your own custom reports.
To do this, you could replicate the above report and filter it for your own pages or you could click on this custom report and save it in the ‘1.GOV.UK (Entire site – Filtered)’ view.